


Late

by CXVII



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Danger, Fighting, Gen, Mystery, Parkour, chase - Freeform, night time, stealth - Freeform, time pressure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27435760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CXVII/pseuds/CXVII
Summary: Our hero misses an important deadline, putting herself in danger, and has to think on the spot in order to solve the problem before the situation grows too dire to make it out alive.





	Late

A glance down at her wrist. She wore her watch with the face on the same side as her palm because she felt it was easier to check. Two minutes. It was still possible. There wasn’t that much distance left to close. And there was very little in between her and her destination.  
The careful, methodical approach that Shannon had used to get where she was had now been abandoned on the way out. Gone were the checks for shadows, the glances to reflective services to check for people approaching. In their place remained a frantic sprint, as the crow flies, towards a grimy grey concrete building standing above the rest of its clones on a monorail platform. Where before she avoided streetlights and piles of dried leaves, now she blitzed through at full speed, hopping over bags of rubbish at the side of the street. On the way in she had avoided the lights, hoping her black tracksuit and grey jumper would help her blend into shade somewhat, but now breezing through gold circles sitting under streetlamps was not a concern. Wind whistled past her ears, making them hurt slightly, but not so loud that the slightest noise in her otherwise silent surroundings didn’t pull her focus. Occasionally her path would be blocked by a fence, requiring something more agile to overcome it in order to maintain momentum.  
She was approaching the concrete structure now, but with so little time left she wouldn’t be able to go in the front door. She’d lose too much time without factoring in the possibility of guards having been sent to intercept her. Deciding to take a shortcut, she ran full speed at the stone support for the rail station. Just as she was set to flatten herself against the wall, she kicked up from the curb and managed to get two or three steps running up the wall before she needed to jump for the last few feet. Her fingertips clasped an electric transformer jutting from the flush surface and she pulled her chest to her hands, looking around for another handhold. A plumbing pipe ran to the gutter at the roof, but it looked unstable. Alas, there was no time to make calculations, no time for second-guesses. She moved upwards and to the right, jumping for the pipe while avoiding the risk of pulling it from its supports. The pipe let out a loud groan but didn’t budge and provided a simple route to the top of the station.  
As she got an arm over the lip of the roof, she realised the groan had not come from her weight on the pipe, but from the train she was supposed to catch slowly pulling from the station. Panic drove her to kick both feet from the wall, using her grip on the ledge as a fulcrum and rolling over her shoulder onto the roof. She saw the train pick up speed, and began to do the same, running towards the edge of the shelter between the stone she stood on and the slowly moving vehicle. However, the upraised hand of the figure on the train’s roof stopped her from attempting the jump. Shannon let an exasperated sigh escape her, staving off fear as she watched the train creep towards the horizon at a hastening pace. Her contact began to fade from view thanks to their own choice of clothing, but before they were lost to shadow completely, they stuck an arm out to their left, Shannon’s right. A single outstretched finger pointed to a second building amid the cluster of drab cubes that made up the view from the roof. As the contact turned to walk from the end of the train, recognition struck Shannon. She grinned and strode to the edge of the roof.

The rush that had driven her to sprint for her life to the monorail station had been eliminated. Plan A for an extraction had been written off almost immediately, and now that plan B was in the hole, Shannon was glad she didn’t have to think of a plan C. The quiet that was unique to the point between late night and early morning would have been the perfect time to form such an escape plan, but there was no need to waste it. She moved through the perpendicular streets with the same eye for stealth she used on the way to her mission at the start of the night, keeping a close eye out for approaching vehicles or footsteps. A quick pace was still important, but now the risk of being stopped by the people seeking her and her contacts out is a priority. And if she understood correctly, her new destination was full of them.  
Adrenaline had seared the view from the station roof into her brain to the extent that she could almost count the turns until she got to where she was heading. It was a good thing too, because although the building had stood out from above, at the ground level this one seemed so similar to the drab brick structures that had hunched over her on either side the entire way there. She slowed to a confident stroll as she locked eyes on her means of escape – a motorbike, parked in the side alley that led to a yard, covered in gravel and dead grass. She glanced around without slowing and moved into the shade of the side of the building, careful to keep her feet away from gravel as she approached the back door of the building. It was unlocked, and fluorescent light streamed in from the slight crack in the frame.  
Shannon filled her lungs with crisp autumn air, still with the smell of a city lingering in it, and stepped into the room like she was supposed to be there. She dropped her hood, shook blonde hair out from under the neckline of the hoodie, and waited for the three figures in the room to take notice. Three adults in white uniforms, padded like riot gear, with helmets that bore a resemblance to a kind of dirt bike helmet Shannon had as a teenager – a full-face visor with a brim like a cap. Several pieces of equipment were attached to the belt of each, including a baton. Each was sat at a monitor desk of some sort; two at computers and one at a grid of screens that looked like a camera array. Pieces of soldering equipment and parts of computers were strewn about some of the desks. Nobody seemed to notice her entry, so she knocked on the now-open door. One glanced up, almost nonchalantly.  
“Yeah, hi. Whose bike is that out the side there?” Shannon asked. Immediately the one that saw her shot up to their feet, and the sound of the desk chair skidding away alerted the other two and brought them to a stand. They each locked their gaze on her and two of them drew their batons. Two of them were taller than her, one shorter. One was dead ahead of her, the other two were off and to her left. The room they were in was not large, but there was another door in the opposite corner. None of them seemed to have any intention of leaving. There were no cameras in the room despite the surveillance array she was looking straight at. All this information was gleaned over the course of the two-second gap between everybody standing and the guard facing her stepping towards her to attack. But Shannon had seen everything she needed to see. She raised both eyebrows when she noticed the guards were approaching her, and shrugged.  
The first guard immediately raised the baton overhead. Shannon stepped under it and spun with an arm out, sending the guard staggering over one of her legs and out the open door. The spin brought her facing the other two figures in white. One of them threw a punch and Shannon weaved under it, lashing an elbow into the helmet of the remaining guard who had yet to so much as move. They fell back into their chair and Shannon struck the one left standing in the side of the neck with the edge of her hand. Noticing that they were off balance, she grabbed them by the back of the head and threw them back in the direction of the door, just as the first guard had been trying to re-enter. While there was a scuffle in the entryway, Shannon cracked the visor of the guard on the seat with a right cross, and they slumped in their seat. The baton wielding guard pushed their sputtering colleague out of the way and came at Shannon again with a forward stab to the gut. Why they chose to stab with a blunt object Shannon had no idea, but she sidestepped, grabbed the arm holding the weapon, and spun to place her back against that of the guard. Still gripping their forearm, Shannon quickly straightened her posture and pulled hard on the arm. There was a sickening pop and the guard cried out, dropping the baton. Shannon kicked it away and stepped out from under the guard, and they fell, banging their head on the corner of the monitor desk. It was now that the final aggressor was regaining their senses, and Shannon was feeling proactive. She quickly moved to put the guard between herself and the screens, and kicked straight forward. The attack landed square in the chest of her target, and they rocketed backwards, tripping over their teammate and hitting one of the screens with the back of their head, breaking the glass and halting the image.  
The room had gone from relative quiet, to chaos, and now back to silence in a matter of moments. Three figures in white were strewn about the confined space, none moving. Shannon exhaled, and hurriedly searched the pockets of the guards for keys. She found a set of keys in the possession of the one with a damaged visor, keys with the Yamaha logo on the fob. Grinning again, she quickly made for the door and closed it over behind her.

The motorbike roared to life from underneath her when she turned the ignition. The bike was clearly on the old side, as it coughed exhaust from the rear and sliced into the peace of the night with its grumbling engine, presumably angry at having been awoken so late. Shannon tore from the side of the road back along the way she came, making a beeline for the monorail track when she noticed she would have to detour to get to the station. She followed the line as best she could, given that she was no longer able to jump over chain-link fences as she had been while on foot. The trade-off for this was that she moved at a lightning pace, turning corners with the ease that came with years of failing to pull it off in her youth. Eventually, the light of the train was visible in the distance, and she knew she was getting close. But it was not the sound of it that was most audible to her. Instead, two white cars came barreling towards the road she was driving down, attempting to intercept her. Shannon was suddenly aware she had not been as stealthy as she had hoped, and the bike was not helping at all. But the train was closer now.  
She leaned forward and willed her steed to go faster, aiming to drive along the same side of the tracks as she approached the train. The monorail line could be seen curving right in the distance, and the train itself wasn’t terribly far from this. Finally, she was keeping pace with the train, repeatedly glancing up at it hoping to catch a glimpse of her contact, but focusing on not burying herself and her ride in a brick wall. Above the din of engines her own heartbeat was maintaining rhythm to the whole ordeal. She wished she had tucked her hair back into her hood because it whipped around her head now, another thing threatening the balancing act that was keeping her alive. A shot rang out from behind her and she prayed one of the cars had simply backfired, preferring to think about the option that generated less of a feeling of mortal peril. The turn was approaching in the monorail line, and the streets did not follow. Shannon was at risk of losing the train soon. She was beginning to question if she had interpreted the plan her contact had suggested for her correctly.  
But as if on cue, a spool of rope fell from the sky and nearly whipped her from the driver’s seat. It was flying in the wind, but very much keeping pace with the bike. Or rather, with the train. Shannon looked up and saw that it led up to the top of the vehicle. Her thoughts raced. “Absolutely not. I might die. I could end up in hospital. The rope could get caught. The cars are gaining on me. I really hope that wasn’t a gunshot-“  
And then she stopped thinking. She grabbed the rope with both hands and kicked off the motorbike, right as the track began to curve to one side. The bike skidded and very nearly lodged itself in the bumper of the first white car, but it swerved out of the way at the last second, just in time to force the second car off the road and into a parked tow truck. Some of the rust seemed to fall off the tow truck upon impact like dust falling from a photo frame. The track began to turn properly, and the momentum caused the rope to lift slightly outwards from buildings that would have broken every bone in her body at the speed she was going. Realising this, Shannon hastily climbed up the rope while she had the time to. The last few feet were aided by her contact at the top, pulling her up onto the train’s roof with both legs wrapped around a support for extra security. Shannon scrambled safely onto the corrugated steel surface at long last, and lay on her back, exhausted. Her blood was ice cold with adrenaline. Her breath was almost hoarse. She stared up at her contact, glaring back down at her.  
“You’re late,” they spat.  
“I know,” Shannon retorted.


End file.
